The current smartphone market consists of 6 major platforms:  Palm OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android, and Mac OSX/iPhone.  2009 is going to see a 7th platform since Palm is finally going to release a new operating system called WebOS, but details are still sparse and unconfirmed for the most part about the Palm Pre and WebOS.

As a mobile device enthusiast and new developer, this is a very good time to get into the mobile programming world, but how do you choose which platform to use?  One way is to look at sales numbers and other trends that may relate to those numbers.

Luckily, we have companies like Gartner that make it their business to know what is going on in the technology world, including the cell phone and smartphone market.  They recently released the 2008 numbers that include a break-down by mobile platform.

Over the last couple of years, the smartphone market has been growing.  Big time players like Apple and Google are now in the game going against old time favorites like Research in Motion, Microsoft, and Nokia.  Behind the scenes, the device makers and developers are carefully watching the trends to see what platform to commit time and resources to.  In 2008, smartphones made up 20% of all cell phone sales in North America.  A lot of this is related to carriers finally pushing devices since most smartphones require a data plan.  These data plans give the carriers a new source of income outside of the normal talk time and texting charges, so it is in their interest to promote them.

Over the next couple of days, I am going to dig into this data in depth and share my analysis of what happened with the different smartphone platforms in 2008.

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